Kelly Rutherford Settling into NYC

Receive the latest niteside updates in your inbox

“Gossip Girl” star Kelly Rutherford says she’s settling into New York City a little more now that her young son is attending school here.

What’s her favorite part of the city? Central Park.

“I really love it,” she said. “I think it makes the city so extraordinary -- the fact that you have this beautiful place that’s green and all the playgrounds and the museums.”

Rutherford has been making all the stops an Upper East Side matriarch would make -- on Monday, she helped kick off a recycling awareness effort in Times Square, and then took part in a fundraiser for the New York soup kitchen City Harvest Wednesday night.

“I think that the concept should be taken global,” she said of City Harvest, which rescues extra food from restaurants, grocery stores and other establishments across town and serves it to those most in need. “If we could do this globally, we could change the world.”

Another famous New Yorker, “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon, hosted City Harvest’s 17th annual “An Evening of Practical Magic.”

“On the one hand, I think New Yorkers can get inured to the homeless problem and hungry people, but, on the other hand, in some ways we have advantages that people in other places don’t have because we see poor and hungry people right in front of us,” said Nixon. “We see them sleeping in the subway. We see them sleeping on the street. And so, in some ways, we are more confronted by them, and … that’s more of a spur for us to do something about it.”